clarifying urban property rights, without effort

On August 4, 2014August 4, 2014 By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, infill development, pedestrianism, placemaking, politics, urban views, vignettesLeave a comment

An entry in the new series, depicting the common sense dimensions of urban places

In today’s shareable city, there are some things—like driveway access—that are difficult for many people to surrender to chance. In this case, the means of communication, both inadvertent and direct, caught my eye for inclusion in this “common sense” series.

Over a year after publication of Urbanism Without Effort, I still come upon memorable, unique images of small-scale urban representations of standard human fare. In this instance, near dusk, my Sony A7S recorded a simple, private rights assertion next to public rights of way.

Consider this adaptation of what could well be a leftover holiday lawn ornament, a likely award winner in a conjectural “you can’t make this stuff up” competition.

As I’ve said many times: The urbanism we already have is often the best urbanism of all.

For more information on the role of personal experience in understanding the changing city, see Urbanism Without Effort, an e-book from Island Press.

capturing underlying patterns of urban street design

On March 19, 2014March 19, 2014 By Chuck WolfeIn compact development, everyday urbanism, infill development, infrastructure, pedestrianism, placemaking, sustainability3 Comments

Have you ever wondered why some places seem built for automobiles as opposed to humans?

In a recent study, J. Alexander Maxwell and fellow researchers from the University of Strathclyde’s Urban Design Studies Unit found evidence that before the rise of the automobile, cities developed on a walkable “human” scale, with main streets that rarely exceeded 400 meters (a little more than 437 yards).

I recently joined Mr. Maxwell as co-author of an article in the London School of Economics and Political Science American Politics and Policy Blog. Together, we argue that this uniformity reveals an underlying pattern to pedestrian city settings, which merits renewed attention in contemporary urban design and policies.

Read our article here.

why urban history matters

On March 3, 2014May 12, 2019 By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, housing, infill development, infrastructure, lessons learned, placemaking, sustainability, urban views8 Comments

Going forward, let’s not discount the influence of history’s recurring themes in how we redevelop the urban realm.

So many discussions about cities today look only forward, without fully considering the past. We presume ways of life that must change for the better: Greener, more inclusive and shareable; global in orientation; away from land use regulations that favor separation of uses, and towards healthier, less auto-dependent realms.

I do not believe for a moment that urban change is so simple. Without a longer view, we risk undervaluing lessons learned long ago.

Height, density, use/control of land and public health in urban settings have evolved for a very long time. We can build on this urban history of reinvention and renewal and think more universally about how past, present and future define urban development.

Last week, I went to Edinburgh, Scotland to see why this urban history matters.

What is the value of historical perspective, particularly in the world heritage areas of central Edinburgh? Such focus goes far beyond common “brick and mortar” examples, such as castle ruins, statues of architect Robert Adam and William Wallace (Braveheart), a tower honoring author Walter Scott or St. Giles Cathedral.

Rather, as urban thinkers such as Sir Patrick Geddes once stressed, the real emphasis is on the power of continuous human settlement—and inspiration gleaned from a dynamic city over time.

The humble acceptance of the long-term reminds us, according to the Scottish architectural historian Miles Glendinning, that change is a constant, and that specific themes of long-term habitation can create broader ways of understanding the cyclical nature of urban reinvention.

We know that rediscovery of the inner city is the raison d’être of many urban-dwellers today, and that dense urban cores are both increasing lifestyle choices and economic drivers from the regional to international levels. We now tend to disfavor sprawl as a solution to overcrowded conditions, and stress instead old standby’s of increased height, cooperative living spaces and smaller dwellings.

But places like Edinburgh’s world heritage areas show that our current ability to meet these goals safely is reflective of lessons learned long ago, when overpopulated and unsanitary conditions within city walls eventually inspired new understandings of urban disease control. Within medieval Edinburgh, buildings as high as 11-15 stories once flanked the High Street (Royal Mile) as it crossed in linear fashion from Edinburgh Castle to Hollyrood Palace.

The upper classes lived on upper floors. The poor lived below. Waste disposal competed with walking and commerce in the closes, wynds (alleys in today’s parlance) and courtyards of old, as sewerage found its way to the small lake (the Nor’ Loch) then flanking the city’s northern boundary.

Later, wider streets cut into former closes and wynds, while others remained intact. Such early governmental interventions brought light and air to former “high rises” and underground dwellings, and the eventual transition of the polluted Nor’ Loch to gardens at the base of the Old Town.

Today, Edinburgh’s Old Town is part tourist, part retrofit. The medieval shell survives, but living conditions are now consistent with a modern age. Historic venues such as the Royal Mile have new roles, and captivating visuals such as the bend in West Bow Street replace the rudiments of life within the walls with the trends of today.

What lessons emerge from buried, medieval closes and formerly inhabited, forgotten building vaults of the Old Town?

Credit: The Real Mary King’s Close, Edinburgh

In a tour of remaining portions of several abandoned underground medieval closes covered by building foundations since the 18th century, I saw eerie parallels to today’s reinvented urban alleys and laneways, apodments and live-work dwellings—the medieval spaces evolved without the banner of pestilence—back to the future, with modern gloss.

Similarly, it was not hard to see how today’s urban redevelopers can repopulate the shells of the past when opportunity strikes in a more modern form of infill. In 2002, a fire destroyed a group of Old Town tenements (termed a “rabbit warren” by firefighters) next to the historic Cowgate area. Edinburgh-based Whiteburn worked with planners, heritage groups and the community to assemble eight formerly disparate properties and redevelop the area into a mixed use venue including a new hotel and grocery store.

And what of the neoclassical New Town, the city planning marvel centered around stately squares and avenues, authored by competition winner James Craig in 1766-67? The planned New Town was nothing short of a period-piece, stately reinvention of the original urban core, which quickly became a residence for the wealthy, and provided gateway to later expansion as the city grew. Now a commercial hub at the base of the Old Town, it largely retains the Georgian grandeur of its original design.

My sense of the New Town’s legacy?

Its physical form provides testament to the power of interventionist planning when a municipality has a broad swath of land assembled for a common purpose. In this case, Scotland’s unification/military peace with England tendered the Old Town’s walls irrelevant after the mid-18th century, and an earlier royal grant had made the land available.

Today’s Edinburgh still benefits from the wide spaces of Craig’s plan, which so profoundly contrasts with the tight scale and former living conditions of the Old Town above.

***

In the end, the historical perspective presented here raises interesting questions about the nature of urban change, and how a global economy integrates with an evolving urban artifact. In Edinburgh, integrity issues began long ago, and continue, with classic historic preservation debates along the Royal Mile and the construction of the controversial Scottish Parliament on the site of the old Hollyrood Brewery —not to mention railroad incursions of the nineteenth century and much-debated urban malls in the New Town.

But to an American observer from Seattle, one hometown image—the Starbucks logo—particularly stands out. In the photograph below, storied history and modern lifestyle communicate their “age value” to one another from a vaunted wide avenue of the New Town. Looking up from the New Town’s George Street, midway between St. Andrews and Charlotte Squares, medieval past and global future speak to their uniting element: human ingenuity and reinvention, across the ages.

Images composed by the author in Edinburgh, Scotland, with the exception of the photograph of Mary King’s Close, obtained from a distributed photograph by The Real Mary King’s Close, Edinburgh. Click on the images for more detail. © 2009-2014 myurbanist. All Rights Reserved. Do not copy.

For more information on the role of personal experience in understanding the changing city, see Urbanism Without Effort, an e-book from Island Press.

urban blending and the mythical search for ‘congruity’ in the city

On January 28, 2014January 29, 2014 By Chuck WolfeIn compact development, environmental and land use law, everyday urbanism, infill development, placemaking, urban juxtapositions, urban views, urbanism without effort

Eighth in the new series, in the urban world, juxtapositions matter

Last week, a colleague in my day job contacted me in search of an expert witness in a large American city. This ask for a recommendation—and its premise—was not unusual for a pending design review process. His client needed a credible opinion that proposed development, flanking a current urban open space, would be “incongruous” with the existing use.

For many, a dramatic contrast in height, bulk and density is the recipe for “incongruity”. But, in a larger sense, don’t today’s urban centerpieces by definition show the latent “incongruities” of city life?

Think of Chicago’s Millennium Park, and its multifaceted and controversial history of funding snafus, cost overruns and debates about building aesthetics, security practices and public access. Should default discussion about an urban project really be focused first on surrounding building height and modulated, architectural solutions (sometimes termed “density with grace“)?

Actually, urban blending and any associated quest for balance are much broader topics, and my response to my colleague above was both quizzical and consistent with my New Year’s, series-framing premise: Once a potential urban overlap, overlay, or “juxtaposition” emerges, the search for harmony and agreement should travel far beyond physical limits, in a comprehensive fashion not limited by ambiguous words.

Many “experts” opining on tall, “densifying” edges of public open space are actually more concerned with broader issues, such as funding mechanisms that pay for the open space and improvements, as well as other key, urban “go-to” disciplines, including transportation and housing. This breadth of focus can lead to a very different view that leverages “incongruity” as the inevitable urban solution.

In other words, the “incongruity” that some would malign as an uneven landscape of height and imbalance, becomes a treasure-trove of irregular, provocative architecture and investment. This investment generates aesthetic and monetary capital to enhance, and not detract from, the public realm nearby.

. . . .

As often happens, consideration of these issues reminded me of something more fundamental and traditional—a mix of human imprints on the natural environment that I have written about before, a world away. In Iceland, I characterized much of what I saw there as an unforgettable balance of human settlement and dramatic surroundings.

As I said last year both here and in Atlantic Cities:

In Icelandic landscapes, in small towns, and in the resurgent capital city of Reykjavik, are scenes and stories that transcend nature, culture and the built environment. In the imagery of such places, we see scaled expressions of urban settlement and transport, both past and present, including dramatic examples of human interactions with the raw elements of nature.

In these photographs, the visual juxtaposition of fishing village and glacier, of small buildings and sky, is to me, nothing short of astounding. The harmony and agreement—the “congruity” that is the foil of this story—is clearly present where churches and outbuildings on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula honor natural surroundings with simplicity and scale.

In the city, can we, and should we, aspire to such purity?

How much should regulations, and battles of noble NIMBY and developer, dance around the prospect of such resplendent and ideal visions?

While under our regulatory system, the whims of subjective citizen commissioners may be kept honest by largely objective city staff, project proponents will almost always argue the real cost of materials and the balance of profit that complicate the limited aesthetic orientation proffered above. In a “densifying” urban core, the marketplace often varies from an implementable, smaller scale of development.

The point of showing a vision as clear as the Snæfellsnes Peninsula—supplanting for a moment Millennium Park’s big city dimensions—is not to dwell in a nostalgia of lesser scale overseas. Rather, by showing examples of authentic harmony and agreement—at least as I see them—we can distinguish the balance humans still carry out in the raw landscapes of simpler places from the vocabulary of balance we often seek downtown.

. . . .

When faced with a juxtaposition such as the problem presented—an “incongruous” urban development—I have learned both as practitioner and pundit not to dwell on the perfect extremes sought by proponents and detractors. Client permitting, I would rather spend time with the inherent compromises necessary when the discussion inevitably moves toward the merger of public and private realms.

If we remember these nuances in urban setting today, we will better understand that balance and “congruity” are not absolutes, but end-games with multiple meanings, dependent on context, and careful reflection.

For more information on the role of personal experience in understanding the changing city, see Urbanism Without Effort, an e-book from Island Press.

beyond old versus new in the city, and why

On January 20, 2014January 19, 2014 By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, infill development, placemaking, sustainability, urban juxtapositions, urban views, urbanism without effortLeave a comment

Sixth in the new series, in the urban world, juxtapositions matter

The overlay—or contrast—of old and new is central to any policy analysis or planning exercise for the evolving city.

Not surprisingly, the opening post in this series also addressed the old/new overlay at the project level, through illustration of an abandoned, single-family house, next to an under-construction, mixed-use building.

But old versus new is perhaps the most simple juxtaposition in the city, and an incomplete expression of all the interactive forces that are really at play.

Regulatory tools such as design review define authenticity, and essentially approach change as an appropriate, compatible enhancement, or an undesireable imposition.

But the above photographs introduce additional, complementary parameters for discussion. In the first photograph, the ancient Roman amphitheater in Fréjus, France, shows restoration to active use for concerts far removed from its original purpose. In the second, a Starbucks store graces a refurbished part of the classic Rossio railway station in Lisbon, Portugal.

These photographs also show that analysis of change should be more qualitative and contextual, focusing on multiple overlays associated with the evolution of urban space, and not on just the change itself.

Regulatory approaches are not the only “media” that address alteration of urban settings. I have often referenced The Genius of a Place, a cinematic critique of how Cortona, Italy underwent rapid, tourism-based change after the publication of Frances Mayes’ Under the Tuscan Sun. The soon-to-be-released Genius emphasizes the unintended loss of age-old ways of life and associated economic and environmental consequences.

Whether you choose to agree or disagree with the cautionary tales of projects like The Genius of a Place, it is critical to understand that overlays of urban change are not always physical. Benefits that go with urban redevelopment often include the initially invisible enhancements to local economic opportunity or governmental economic base.

As noted in the first post in this series, urban juxtapositions can often lead to discussions of who gets, and who pays.

Accordingly, not just old versus new, or physical structure—but several other forces at play in these photographs (and the Genius story) invite analysis and discussion.

How and should a Roman arena be reused? Should an American coffee chain enhance (or compromise) the historic portal to a renowned capital city? Should the commercialization of an American woman’s story redefine longstanding ways of life and sustainable practices in Cortona, Italy?

These are questions—beyond old versus new—that overlays, enhancements and impositions continue to provoke around the world.

For more information on the role of personal experience in understanding the changing city, see Urbanism Without Effort, an e-book from Island Press.

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Category: infill development

clarifying urban property rights, without effort

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capturing underlying patterns of urban street design

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why urban history matters

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urban blending and the mythical search for ‘congruity’ in the city

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beyond old versus new in the city, and why

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